The Story of My Life: The Pendulum

Sunday, July 27th, ended roughly for me.  Carol had texted me a picture of herself and said, "Me....your momma."  It brought up a rage inside of me and I felt very violated.  I was beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into.  If you missed it, you can check out that post here.

On Monday morning, I decided to send Carol an article through Facebook messenger about adoption reunions.  The article share a lot of advice and suggested issues that should be talked through by the adoptee and biological parent/s and siblings.  I told her that I hoped we could begin talking and working through these things and that there needed to be lots of open conversations about them in order to make this process more successful.

She responded that she was in the middle of something and that she would read it later.  Then she started in on Jessie again, but in the midst of it all, she inserted something that caught my attention.  She said, "It was my worse nightmare but out of it I had a beautiful baby girl that my adoptive parents MADE ME give her up."

To see her use the words "it was my worse nightmare" made me think that something terrible had happened to her. Possibly a rape.  I immediately felt sympathy for her and assured her that although I wanted to know generally what the situation was that resulted in me being given up for adoption,  there was no hurry for me to need to know and I for sure did not need to know specifics. 

In the texts that followed over the next couple of days, I found what she said to me to be so confusing.  One text would find me feeling sorry for her and sympathetic and the next one would leave me angry with her and never wanting to speak to her again.  But I took it all in, figuring there must be some information that she was giving me that was true and would help me find the answers I was searching for.  

She told me that she wasn't a bad person, but rather a human being that got in a wrong situation and was suffering for it now except for the fact that she wanted to meet me and get to know me.  She added, "What happened is not important."  I could not have disagreed with her more. I felt like knowing what had happened was very important. It would help me understand better who I was and where I came from.  I was in no hurry to make her tell me anything and I tried to let her know that I had no expectations of her.  I just hoped that in time she would be able to tell me the general reason why I had been given up for adoption.

At one point she said, "You know I was adopted also...my parents that adopted me were my parents....not the lady that gave me up. She was the birth person and that was it...I was grateful she did as far as giving me up for adoption but that was it. I never met her and only talked to her once on the phone because she called my mom that adopted me to get some medical info to me. Once I was adopted, my adoptive parents were my parents and always will be."

At this point I felt like maybe we understood each other.  I had been wanting to address the "your momma" reference to her picture, so I used this as an opportunity.  I responded, "I was reading the things that you said about your birth mother. In a lot of ways, that is how I feel about this situation. I love my mom and dad and they are my parents and always will be. I am grateful that you gave me life and I am thankful for the role that you plated. I understand that this is hard for you...I want you to know, I have no expectations of you. I don't want you to feel like you have to have a relationship with leif that is too hard. I would love to get to know you as a friend if you feel like you can handle that. That is the only role I would ask you to fill in my life."

She never responded directly to what I said. But she did tell me again to send her any questions that I had and she would answer them, again saying that the others were not to know.  I had decided after the earlier reference to some kind of trauma around my conception, that I was not going to directly ask her about that again. I didn't want to cause her additional stress. I would only talk to her about it if she were the one to bring it up. 

It didn't take long. I received a text later that day that said, "Ok this is it...my life is mine...what happened to me was a long time ago. 40 years right? The guy's name I do not know. I was drugged. I woke up and my friend that took me there, her and I then left. End of story.  I know it is not much but that is all I know and remember."

I was sick to my stomach as I responded to Carol, "So it was rape?"

She texted back, "If it was rape or it was consensual, does it make a difference?  No, it doesn't.  It happened I got pregnant. I had you and end of story. This is my life we are talking about and no, I am not happy or proud about what happened, except I had you and gave you the opportunity to be adopted and you were. End of story.  Please do not pass this info on to Jessie or Brad or anyone. Thanks."

I was so confused. Was it rape or was it not?  And if it was rape, why was it so important to keep that a secret from the others? I figured in a traumatic situation like that, they would rally around her and be supportive. So why the secrets?  Secrets are powerful and if you let them out, they can no longer have control over you.

I told her that I had always assumed it was consensual and if it was rape, that it would help me to understand her better.  I told her that I was not ashamed of who I am even if I was conceived in a way that she thought people might judge...that my conception is just a part of my story, but it doesn't define me.  What defines me is who I am in Jesus and that she needed to let that define her as well.  Under the blood we are all forgiven and God sees us as righteous beings because he sees the cloak of Jesus' righteousness on our shoulders.  I urged her to let God define her and not to worry about what other people would think.

It hadn't even been a week since I had found my biological relatives, but already it was having an emotional toll on me. I was having difficulty sleeping at night and I found my emotions changing so quickly from happy to sad to angry.  The emotional changes were affecting not just me, but also my family.  Something had to be done.  Steve urged met to back off on the texting with Carol, so I did. He also put in a call to the adoption agency for me.  He told the lady there that I had found my birth mother and she offered to call me to talk with me about the situation.

When Linda from the adoption agency called, I was so grateful. My first counseling appointment was still over a week away but I needed someone to help me navigate this situation.  She had pulled my file and read through it. She said the file was pretty thin without a lot of information in it.  And even though there wasn't much, she wasn't allowed to share all of it with me. She did tell me what she could and was willing to try to answer questions that I had.  I asked her most importantly if I came to be as a result of a rape.  She responded, "There is no trauma indicated in Carol's file."

I decided at that moment, I was done with trying to get information from Carol. It seemed I would have a very difficult time knowing for sure if what she was telling me was the truth or not. 

Later that day, Carol texted me and said that she did not want any of this to be anyone else's business but mine and hers.  I responded and said, "I don't need to know any more. I know enough."

I decided that I didn't need her help to figure it all out. I just believed in my heart that one day I would know. 

The Story of My Life: You Are Not My Momma

I had found my birth siblings on Wednesday, July 23, 2014 and began communicating with my birth mother that same night. The conversation with her started off well with us exchanging information about ourselves and comparing the things that we had in common. Within a day or so, she started using terms of endearment with me which caught me off guard and left a funny feeling in my stomach.  I didn't really like her calling me her "sweet daughter" and her saying "luv you" to me.  By Saturday, July 26th, she had begun venting to me about the questions my half-sister, Jessie, had about what happened to me and then told me that we should just keep the questions between us. You can check out that post here.

When Sunday rolled around, I decided that I should try to address with Carol how she was feeling about the fact that I had been found when she wasn't really looking for me.  Since we were planning to go to Florida in a few weeks for a visit  with my half siblings and I was sure there would be lots of pictures posted on Facebook, I decided asking what she thought in regards to that would be a good starting point. 

Carol responded, "If you don't want to do it, then don't. That is your choice and no one can make you do it." Then she started going off on Jessie again saying that what had happened to her was "her business" and didn't need to be brought out in the open.  She ended with, "Don't tell them anything you don't want to tell. It is your life not theirs."

I assured her that I wanted to do this, that I wanted to meet my siblings and I wanted to tell people. That even though the siblings and I were super excited about it, that I could understand how this situation could cause her some anxiety. I had been her secret and it seemed that the circumstances around my existence weren't the best. Everything I had read said, in many cases when an adopted child was found that wasn't being looked for by the birth mother,  it brings up all the hurt, shame, guilt and other emotions from the birth experience. I imagined this to be the case with her which is why I told her that I wanted to know how she was doing and that she didn't need to worry about me. 

Her answer: "I have no problem with that....I will deal with it when it happens.  It is Jessie I worry about......"  

*sigh*  I was getting pretty tired of this. Why did she keep venting to me? I was not the one that she should be talking to about that.  So I decided not to answer her for the rest of the afternoon. 

Fortunately VBS was starting at church that evening and I was helping with the teaching part of it. I had something else to capture my attention for a while and it was desperately needed. But the distraction didn't last too long. 

When I got home from church, Carol had texted me again.  This time she was asking about how church had been and told me that she knew there was a storm coming our way.  

We actually had a pretty good talk this time. We talked about how things were for each of us as we were growing up. We talked about how I met Steve and how she had met her husband, Ron. We talked about our parents and their professions. We talked about church. She told me she had been saved during Bible school many years ago.

I couldn't believe that we were actually back to having a fairly normal conversation.  But then it happened.....

She texted me a picture of herself.  

The caption -  "Me.....your momma."

Now I am not a person who usually cusses. I wasn't raised that way and if I said any word that even resembled a cuss word when I was a kid, my mouth was sure to be washed out with soap.

But at that moment, a fit of rage welled up inside of me.  I threw my phone on the bed and said, "Who the hell does she think she is saying that to me??"  (Sorry, mom and dad.)

The only way that I can describe how that phrase she said made me feel is violated.  Yep. Violated.  It was one thing for her to call me her "sweet daughter."  It is possible that she viewed me that way and I could understand that. After all, she did carry me in her belly for nine months and then give birth to me.  But for her to put on herself the title of "my momma" felt like she had forced upon me the position that she wanted to take in my life.   That position was already filled.  It was taken by a woman who cared for me as a wee infant, who jump roped with me in the living room of our trailer in Wisconsin, who was at my high school and college graduations and who was there when I walked down the aisle to marry the man of my dreams.  And I had no plans to replace her.

So again, I did not respond....

A few minutes later Carol texted and said she was headed to bed. That she loved me and would talk to me later.

All I said was "goodnight." And I wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into.

The Story of My Life: Secrets

After the initial conversation with my birth mom on July 23rd, she started including things such as "my sweet daughter" and "luv you" in her texts to me. I was totally caught off guard by the emotional response inside of me to those statements.  I was trying to figure out how I should handle it. You can read a little bit more about that here.

Saturday, July 26th, rolled around.  My first counseling appointment was still two and a half weeks away. Realizing that I needed some advice and better understanding regarding what was going on with Carol and these words of endearment that I was so frustrated by, I turned to a trusty friend for help - Google.  I read article after article on adoption reunions hoping to find something to help me figure out what was happening.

I began to understand that as the adoptee, while I was excited and looking for answers about myself, it was common in this type of situation for the birth mother to be taken back to the place where the child was given up and to feel the emotions of that time. I also read that it was recommended that the person who was doing the searching be the one to help talk through and set up the expectations of the relationship.  Since Carol was not the one that had been looking, she was caught off guard by my return and not really ready to handle thinking through those decisions. Since I had been looking for a while, I had already had a little bit of time to process what was happening.  I began reading about ways to do approach the topic of our relationship.  Be patient. Don't ask too many hard questions right off the bat and take things slow. Be willing to be flexible. Talk about what your expectations are. 

I began to think about what I truly was wanting from this reunion. What expectations did I have?  I really hoped to be able to have a friendship with Carol. I hoped that we would be able to be involved in each others lives. I hoped to be able to learn about where I came from and maybe even who my birth father was. I also began to think through what I didn't want. I didn't want to be "needed" by someone, to have to fill any void in their life, just as I didn't want to "need" anyone in return.  And I knew that I didn't want another mother. I already had one, and no one else could take her place in my life.

I knew I would need to be patient and wait for a good time to be able to address these things with Carol. I had to be careful about how I worded it. I didn't want her to somehow feel rejected by me when I shared what my feelings were about the situation.  I also hoped that she would be able to express to me what she was hoping for through this reunion and that somehow we would be able to come to an understanding.

Saturday was quiet on the texting front with her. I had decided that I needed to slow things down a little bit and not be in such a hurry to respond when she texted.  Carol texted me first that day, around 6 pm. 

Here is what she said:

"Hello. I want you to know that if you ever have any questions about me and about you, please know that you can ask me anytime and I will tell you. I have waited for this time to come to find you and meet you and I am not going to let anyone mess it up.  Hope you had a good day. We planted flowers and rose bushes and put down mulch....yes I am sore.....again I will answer questions if you have any....later."

I felt like I had been handed an opportunity to start explaining what I was hoping for out of the relationship. So I responded and said: 

"Obviously I do have lots of questions. I want to know about you, about your family, about my dad and what happened with that whole situation. I understand why you had to give me up and I have no problems with that. I feel like that was the best thing you ever could have done for me. I am so thankful and grateful. As for the other part, I want to be sensitive to you and your feelings. I want you to be able to share when you are ready. I am sure that was probably a very difficult time for you and I don't want to force you to drudge up the hurt in your past."

Her response to me caught me a bit off guard. Besides the fact that she began with "I love you," she went on venting to me about Jessie asking her questions about what had happened with me.  She ended with, "I am so embarrassed by the way she is acting towards me and you. I will talk with you later."

I couldn't understand why this woman that I hardly knew was venting to me, someone she hardly knew, about her child. It didn't seem right to me. And I don't know if you caught this or not, but I did and my antenna went up.  "....the way she is acting towards me and you...."  

Granted, I don't know what was going on behind the scenes with her and Jessie and I didn't need to know.  I could totally understand why Jessie would be asking questions of her and it didn't surprise me that she would be. I could totally understand why Carol would be upset by the questioning.  The decision to give me up for adoption was one that affected not just Carol and me, but all of the other siblings as well, especially once she had told them about me about 16 years previous to this time. I felt like everyone was deserving of answers.  What I didn't understand was why she was suggesting that Jessie was somehow acting in an embarrassing way towards me.  My interaction with Jessie and the other siblings up until this time had been nothing but excitement and fun. We made lots of silly jokes that would have all of us laughing so hard. We talked excitedly of the reunion we were going to have in about three weeks, as Steve and I talked about it and decided to drive to Florida where all of the siblings live so I could meet them and their families.  Outside of Brad jokingly suggesting that there was a possibility that he had a birth father different than who she said because of the fact that he is so much taller than all of us and he is the only one of us with green eyes, no one had said anything negative to me about Carol at all. In fact, I was truly enjoying all of my interactions with my half siblings.

I wrote her back and told her that because of my reading on adoption reunions, I knew that it was not uncommon for everyone involved to experience a huge variety of emotions. I told her that I did not think anyone was wrong for asking questions just like I did not think she was wrong for not wanting to answer them.  It was only normal since I had been on the minds of the other members of the family for years and they themselves wondered what had happened.

She responded and told me not to worry about it. That there were many questions that we all had and everyone was excited and wanted to meet me.  But then she said....."let's just keep the questions between you and me."

Secrets. I despise them.  Now I am not saying that there can't be things about you that you keep to yourself and don't tell a lot of people.  I can respect everyone's privacy. The kind of secrets I am talking about are the ones where a situation affects a multitude of people, yet steps are taken to keep the truth hidden except from a few. My past was full of hurt because of secrets and I had just come out of the hurtful church situation which was full of hidden truth. I didn't want to be responsible for hiding truth from others. And even though I knew that it meant that I may not find things out as quickly as I hoped or even at all,  my response to her was....

"I am not in the least bit worried. I have enjoyed chatting with you and all the siblings. Part of this whole process is going to be lots of questioning and discovery about who I am and for me it will be about learning who all of you are. I am not one to hold back and when people ask me questions, I tend to answer them directly. If there are things you prefer they not know, it might be best not to tell me."

The Story of My Life: Emotional Entanglements

I love knowledge. I love the joy you feel when you finally figure something out and the light goes on inside of your head. I guess that is why I became a teacher. I wanted to be able to pass that joyous experience on to my students (although many of them really did not feel the same way I did about learning).  

To have figured out who my birthmother was, was one of those joyous experiences. I was so eager to learn more about her as it only meant I was learning more about me.

Let's travel back to that time in 2014. On Wednesday, July 23rd,  I had found my birth siblings and had my first contact with my biological mom, Carol.  If you have not read that part of the story, you can find it here.  It is now the following day. Thursday, July 24.  So many questions were being asked that day and I found some of the answers to be very interesting and some to be an eery coincidence.

Carol grew up in Findlay, Ohio.  (I found this pretty ironic since my maiden name was Finley.)  Her dad was a farmer and had a meat processing business.  Her mom was a bookkeeper at the Kirk Milling Company. The man she worked for was one of the richest men in town.  Carol's parents adopted her when she was a couple of months old.  Like me, she grew up in a conservative home and attended a Baptist church.  She was involved at church playing the piano and organ. While I never played the organ, I had played the piano since I was a little girl. She also played the flute, which I had played for a couple of years during high school and college. 

The paper I had from the adoption agency said she had attended a Christian college for one quarter. When I asked her what college it was, she replied Cedarville.  I could not believe it. That is the same college that I graduated from. And not only that, it is the same college that both of my parents have degrees from as well.  It isn't like Cedarville is a huge university like UNC or Ohio State. It is a small, Christian College in the middle of a cornfield in Ohio. 

Carol had grown up in Ohio and lived there for a while after she married. Then she lived in Florida for a while and for a bit in North Carolina. Currently she was living in Tennessee. Her husband, Ron, was a truck driver. They had a chihuahua named Bentley that she said she spoiled all the time. Multiple times she said she hoped that they would be able to come for a visit soon.

It seemed as things were going really well, but then something happened that confused me terribly. I wasn't really sure how to handle it. I am not blaming her for what happened. I am sure it is a fairly common response in this situation.  I just didn't know what to do with it. 

We had been texting all day and Carol said she was going to hit the bed and talk to me tomorrow.  

Then she said it...."sweet dreams, my daughter."

I understood that this was an emotional time in both of our lives. I did not feel any type of mother-daughter connection with Carol. While I was excited that I had found her and now knew where I had come from, that was as far as our relationship went. I did not feel anything deeper so I decided to just ignore that comment.

The next day, Friday the 25th,  began with a quick text from Carol telling me that she had gone to McDonalds for breakfast and was planning to pull weeds and put down mulch that day. She ended it with "luv u." 

I did not respond. I knew that she may love me because she had carried me for those 9 months and had chosen to give me life. But this is someone that I had just met through text and for me, those kind of feelings had not yet developed. I wasn't about to say something that wasn't true.

We texted a few times during the day, but nothing too deep. I decided I probably needed to take things a bit slower. 

The day ended with her sending me an 'xoxoxoxoxo' text. 

I definitely had some thinking to do about how to handle this.

The Story of My Life: Perfect Timing

As this new chapter of my life was open before me, one where I could talk with the person who gave birth to me,  where I could laugh and joke with those who shared my DNA,  and where I finally had the possibility of knowing where I had come from, I don't believe I was ready for the onslaught of emotions that were about to hit me. Actually, I know I wasn't.

I continued to share with my parents everything that had happened.  When I told them that I had finally been in contact with Carol, I remember my dad tearing up and asking me to please thank her for her gift of me to them. He talked about her sacrifice and was very emotional as he did so. At some point along the way, Steve asked my mom how she was feeling about it all and whether or not she was feeling threatened by any of this.  I will never forget her response. She said, "If Lorena and I are not attached after 40 years, we never will be." That answer comforted me. She knew we were attached and there was no threat. They were my parents and always would be. I was not looking to replace them and they knew it.  Their overwhelming support for me during this process is something I will always be grateful for. There were already so many emotions involved and if I had to tiptoe around them as this was all happening to make sure I didn't upset them, it would have made my life even more complicated than it was already going to be.

And I just have to say again how perfect God's timing is.  He is always there and He always knows exactly what we need and when we need it. Many times I get so busy that I forget to take the time to see what He has done and to thank him for it. But then He throws something out there that is undeniably Him, and it gives me no option to do anything but stop and say thanks.

On July 24th, the day after I found my family and had been talking with them for the very first time, I got a phone call.  The phone call was from Jane. She was calling to see when I wanted to set up my first counseling appointment.

It was the timing of it all that just makes me sit back in amazement.  You see, if you read anything at all on the best way to handle adoption reunions, the one thing that is almost always listed is to get a counselor to walk through the process with you. I hadn't known until the day before that I was going to find my family and that I was going to need someone to help me navigate through the emotions of it all, but God did. And he had set in place some events in my life to get me to the point where Jane would come into my life at exactly the right time.

About a year and a half before all of this, we had gone through a very difficult experience with the pastor of our old church. He was at best a manipulator and what we went through left many people damaged and hurt, including me.  My heart was crushed, my faith was at an all time low and I was left wondering where God was in all of this. I felt misunderstood, lied about, and most of all rejected. I was caught in a downward spiral that left me feeling depressed and angry much of the time.  It affected my relationships with my friends, my children, and most of all my husband.  Steve and I hardly ever fight. It isn't that we don't disagree, we do, but we are able to communicate what we are feeling and work through it together most of the time. During this time period, we were fighting a lot. Mostly because of me, and even if it was not because I me, I would still turn it into a fight. I cherish my marriage and when I said "Until death do us part," I meant it.  But there were times when I found myself thinking things contrary to that commitment. Steve saw what was going on. He suggested marriage counseling and when I finally agreed to it, he jumped on it and got something scheduled right away.

As the counselor worked through things with us, I began to realize that my issues weren't really with Steve. My trust had been broken and so it affected how I saw the other relationships in my life. I felt like I had pretty good discernment when it came to people, so when I had been deceived by this pastor and who he was, I began to doubt my own self. I had trusted that pastor and followed him unreservedly and I was wrong about him.  Maybe I really wasn't so good at knowing who people were and my trust of others began to fall apart. Because Steve was the closest to me, he was the one I doubted the most.

I married a good man.  I know this and I feel so very blessed. Not a day goes by that I don't thank God for him.  Even in my darkest time, even in the time where I was doubting and attacking him, he stood by me.  He didn't criticize my doubt of him, instead he did everything he could to assure me that I really could trust him. If I questioned where he was or what he was doing, instead of berating me for asking, he would FaceTime me so I could see exactly what he was doing. As time went on, I realized that my distrust of him was not valid and my relationship with him was restored to a place even better than before.

During the time with the marriage counselor,  both he and Steve encouraged me to go see another counselor on my own.  There were other issues in my past that I had never dealt with and they both thought it would be helpful for me to finally address them. Although Steve had tried to get me to go before, I wasn't ready.  Now I was.

He had made the call to a lady counselor to get an appointment and on this day, she had called me back.

I told her what I initially needed to see her about and then added on the fact that I had just found my birth mother and would need help with that also. She said that she could help me and that she was an adoptee too.

Just at the right time. Just what I needed. Thank you, Lord.

The Story of My Life: The Beginning of Understanding

Let me begin to create a little bit of a timeline for you, so as this story progresses you can kind of put it all into perspective.

July 22, 2014: My dad gave me the paper with the non-identifying information from the adoption agency. By the end of that day, all of the following had happened.  I had found a post from Jessie Harvey saying she was looking for a birth sibling. I tried to find a way to contact her, but I couldn't, so instead I contacted her brother Brent's wife, Alyssa. Alyssa forwarded my message to Jessie and Jessie contacted me.  I responded to her message but did not hear anything from her until the following morning.

July 23, 2014: I heard back from Jessie and confirmed that she was my half sibling, as the information from the adoption agency that my dad had given me matched her mom's description.  I texted all day with Jessie and brothers, Brad and Brent.

That same evening,  I was at a VBS meeting when Jessie texted me to let me know she had talked with her mom.  I responded to let her know I was at a meeting at church and would get back with her as soon as I was finished.

By 9:15, I was home on the couch texting with Jessie. She told me how she had talked with her mom, and her mom was very mad with her at first. Carol had told her that it was supposed to have been a closed adoption and it was a horrible time in her life that she didn't want brought back up. Jessie then went on to explain to me that Carol herself had been adopted and had grown up in a very, very strict household. When she got pregnant with me, her parents thought she was a disgrace.  Carol's mom even made her a huge coat to hide her stomach so no one would know she was pregnant and bring dishonor to her family. Carol was sent away to the girls home to have me and was told she didn't have a choice. She thought when she signed the adoption papers that it was over with.

So when Jessie told her that I had contacted her, Carol was stunned.  She had told Jessie about me when Jessie was 12, although she never really shared any details about me or about what had happened.  A year or so before this time, Jessie had been able to get enough information out of her mom to be able to put that post up on 'Find Your Family'.  Carol didn't remember giving Jessie that bit of information, so she was sure that this was all a mix up or that Jessie was lying.  Ron, Jessie's dad,  told Carol that the minute Jessie began asking questions about me, he knew that it would only be a matter of time before we found each other.

Jessie's dad told her that Carol was terrified. She didn't want me to think that I wasn't wanted by her and she didn't want the others to think that she didn't care.

I told Jessie to please tell Carol that she did not need to feel bad or have any regret. I only felt that the decision that she had made for me was the most loving and kind thing that she could have done. I told her to let Carol know that I had wonderful, godly parents who loved me as their own and they were so thankful to her for having given them the gift of me. I also asked her to assure Carol that she could take as much time as she needed.

Jessie then told me how her mom had feelings of resentment about being adopted.  She said that 25 years ago that Carol had been contacted by her own birth mom but Carol had wanted nothing to do with her.  I assured Jessie that I had no feelings of resentment toward her mom, only gratitude.

By now it was 9:45 pm and Jessie said that her mom had started asking questions about me.  At 10:00, Carol sent me a Facebook message. It said, "I am excited that you are happy and I know in my heart I did the right thing. We will keep in touch."

I responded and said, "You absolutely did the right thing. So many times over the years I have longed for the opportunity to thank you for giving me life and allowing me the chance to grow up in a Christian home with parents who love God and me. So thank you so very much for that gift. I know what a huge sacrifice that was for you to give me up and I appreciate you doing that for me. I have never had any hard feelings towards you, only gratitude and thankfulness.  Take your time as I am sure there is a lot you are working through. Whenever the time comes that you want to talk, I am here."

There were a few more texts and pictures exchanged and at the same time I was still texting with Jessie. I even had the chance to talk with Jessie on the phone for the first time that night. It was all so very surreal. It was crazy how comfortable it felt to talk with her. Very natural. Kind of like what I had always imagined it would be like to talk with a sister on the phone.

I went to bed with so many thoughts running crazy in my head. I had a difficult time sleeping, as you can probably imagine. One thing I remember very distinctly though, I was so very thankful that God had allowed me the opportunity to thank my birth mother for giving me life.  It was something I had thought about many times growing up. God knew that desire and granted it. And even now when I think back on that blessing, I often wonder, "Why me?" So many adoptees never get that chance, so why was it given to me?  I don't know.  My only explanation is that I know every good and perfect gift comes from above. So I have to again publicly acknowledge and praise the one who gave that gift to me.....God.

The Story of My Life: Are You My Family?

So if you have been keeping up with the story,  you will remember that last time I had searched for a way to get in touch with Jessie, who I believed was possibly my half sister.  I could not find any way that I could contact her, so instead I send a message to Alyssa who was married to Jessie's brother Brent. Facebook would not directly send my message because we were not connected in any way, so I paid a dollar for the message to go to her inbox and not to her "other mailbox".  I had been explaining all of the happenings of the day to my niece Flora who was living with us at the time. I was just telling her about the "other mailbox" when I opened mine to find a message there.   It was from Jessie.

It has been sent at 9:10 pm.  Here is what it said....



My hands were shaking at this point.  It was now 45 minutes after she had sent that message.  I truly felt that God had planned for me to explain all of that to Flora so I would have a reason to check my other mailbox. If she hadn't come home when she did and we hadn't gone through all of that, I do not know when I would have found that message.

I quickly replied and sent it off at 9:58pm.  My response said: Yes. I found your post today on Find My Family that said you were looking for a sibling.  I was born in Valparaiso, Indiana on August 25, 1973. I was adopted when I was 6 days old through a closed adoption. The courts accidentally sent my parents the wrong papers so they have known all along that my birth mother's name was Carol Close. It wasn't until a couple of years or so ago that they shared that information with me.

When I went to bed that night my stomach was in knots. Jessie had not seen the message yet, so I figured I would probably hear something back in the morning.  When I got up, I saw that she had seen the message but she had not replied.  I waited for an hour or so but still nothing.  I started feeling sick in my stomach.  Then I started second guessing what I had found when I was searching yesterday.  Maybe the Jessie Harvey I found was not the Jessie Harvey that put up that post. Had I just freaked someone out by telling them that I thought their mom was my birthmother.

I tried to figure out how to back myself out of this mess, making a mental note that if I ever did this again I needed to proceed with a bit more caution.

I messaged Jessie again. This time I said, "Sorry. I realized this morning that I probably should have verified with you that you had indeed put that post before sharing all that information with you. I hope I didn't tell you something that you didn't already know. Here is a link to the post I was referring to" and I shared the link with her.


About a half an hour later she responded.  Here is what she said....



I responded, "Absolutely," and gave her my number.

I was relieved. It seemed that I had found the right Jessie Harvey after all.

I had an appointment at the eye doctor that morning. It was the same eye doctor that at one point told me that he thought I had Native American blood in me.  He has someone in his family that was adopted and for some reason this particular morning he got on the topic of searching for birth families. It was all I could do to sit there quietly and not say anything about what was going on in my life, that right at that very moment I was waiting for my possible half sister to text me so we could talk for the first time ever.

When my appointment was over, I checked my phone. Nothing yet.  I left the doctor's office and met Steve for lunch. We sat outside the restaurant talking about everything that had happened in the last 24 hours when the first text came.

"Hi. It's Jessie.  SO crazy!! I want to know everything about you. How old are you?  Where do you live? Do you have kids?

But I do have to tell you first, mom doesn't know that you contacted me. She's always been kind of leary about talking about you... she was adopted herself. I'm going to call her in a couple of minutes."

By this time I had decided to be a bit more cautious with my assumptions so I wanted to make sure that Jessie really was my half-sister. I told her I would tell her everything that I knew about her mom to see if it matched what she knew about her.  I pulled the piece of paper out of my purse that my dad had given me just the day before and started texting her the information on that page.  She thought it was crazy that I knew those details about her mom and confirmed that it was indeed her.

We texted back and forth excitedly, sharing pictures and asking each other all kinds of questions. It was such a surreal moment.  Jessie tried to call her mom in the middle of it all, but she didn't answer. She said she would try to call her later on. And we continued to text...

I told Steve at this point that we needed to talk with my parents.  So we called them and arranged for them to come over to my house that afternoon.

I got Facebook friend requests from the boys and I began messaging with them too.  So much happening at one time. So many different emotions.

My parents came over that afternoon. I was so nervous to tell them. When I did,  I think they were a little bit blown away by how quick all of this had happened.  After all, my dad had just given me the paper with the non-identifying information YESTERDAY and within 24 hours I had found and been talking with my three half-siblings.  They were very supportive and were excited to listen to everything I had to tell them and look at the pictures of everyone.  We were all amazed at the similarities between me and my siblings. My dad said he had always thought that I would find my family. They also expressed again how thankful they were for Carol and for the gift that she had given them.  When they left, they told me to be sure to keep them informed of everything that was going on and I assured them that I would.

That evening I had to go to a VBS meeting at church.  Honestly, I did not pay attention AT ALL to the things they were talking about.  All I could think about was the fact that I had found blood family. Family that shared DNA with me.  And then, as if I wasn't distracted enough, I got this text from Jessie.....

"I talked to my mom.... It was pretty emotional. Are you ready for some looooonnnnnnggggg texts? Lol"

The Story of My Life: The "Other" Mailbox

If you missed the last installment, here is the quick version. Josiah had gone to a friend's house for the afternoon. While he was gone,  I searched for Carol Close on the internet and my find led me to a website called 'Find My Family'.  There I found a post by Jessie Harvey who was looking for a birth sibling whose birth mom was Carol Close. If this Carol was my birth mom, then further search showed that I had four siblings, Brad, Brent, Jessie and Jenna.  If you want to read the whole post to catch up, you can find it here.

On the way to pick up Josiah from his playdate, I called Steve. He had received my text and was looking at Carol's profile. I filled him in quickly on what had happened as far as my searching had gone that afternoon.  He said he would continue working on it while I was getting Josiah.

I arrived at the house where Josiah was playing. I went in and ended up talking with his friend's mom for a while.  It was so hard to stay focused on the conversation with all of the other events of the day swirling around in my head.  I wanted so badly to spill everything that was going on, but somehow managed to keep it all in.  In the middle of our conversation, I got a text from Steve. The first chance I had, I glanced down at my phone.

It was only two words.  "Jenna died."

What??!?!?  How??!?!?

His response, "Suicide. In 2007."

My heart broke.  I had already lost one sibling to suicide and if these people truly were my blood family, now that number was two.  Only this time, it would be a sibling I would have never had the chance to meet.

The weight of what had happened to Jenna weighed me down while the excitement about what could possibly be with Carol and Jessie and the others left me overwhelmed.   I was emotional while at the same time feeling half numb. I kept trying to talk sense to myself to keep my heart from getting too overly involved. "Lorena, you still don't know for sure if this is them. You need to stay calm until you do."

I still came home and mourned as I read post after post from different people on her obituary, many from Carol, a mother broken by the loss of her daughter. So much so, that she was still posting in the memory book, the last entry just a couple of months before that day.  And I became even more certain that these people were my birth family as I saw so much of myself in the pictures of them, especially the ones of Jenna.  Looking at pictures of her in her childhood years was like looking at pictures of myself.

That evening when Steve got home from work, we talked about what I ought to do.  We decided that it would probably be best to try to contact Jessie as she was the one that had posted on the adoption registry that she was looking for me. I looked everywhere I could on the internet to find a way to get in contact Jessie.  There was no way to be found.  So after some more discussion, we decided that I should send a note to Alyssa, Brent's wife, and tell her that I was trying to get in touch with Jessie.  I had seen pictures of them together so I knew that they were friends as well as sisters-in-law.

So that is what I did. I sent her a quick note on Facebook. I asked her to pass my information along to Jessie and let her know I was trying to get in touch with her in regards to a post that she had put on the internet the previous October.  When I went to send the message, Facebook informed me that because she and I did not have any contacts in common, my message would not go directly to her inbox. It asked me if I would like to pay a dollar so that it would.  Otherwise, it said it would go to her "other" mailbox. I had never heard of this "other" mailbox and being unsure of exactly how it worked,  I decided to take my chances and see if she would get my message without paying the dollar.

Steve had a church softball game that evening.  I probably checked my phone hundreds of times during the couple of hours we were at the park.  I was so anxious.  When we got home, I saw that Alyssa had posted something on her wall on Facebook, so I knew she had been on and not seen my message.  I paid the dollar to send the message and within an hour, she had responded saying she would forward my message to Jessie.

As I sat on the bed with Steve processing the day,  Flora came home.  She is our niece that was living with us at the time.  She listened as I excitedly shared what had happened that day, in awe of all that had transpired.  I explained to her everything from the paper I received from my dad that morning, to finding Carol's picture, to having to pay the dollar to keep my message to Alyssa from going to the "other" mailbox on Facebook.  When I got to the part about the "other" mailbox, she asked what I was talking about.  And since I had not even known about the "other" mailbox myself until that day, I was happy to pull up my profile and show her how to find it.  When I clicked on the tab to take me to the other mailbox,  I saw it and then let out a scream.

There was a message in there.....from Jessie Harvey.

The Story of My Life: Finding Carol

If you have not read the previous blog, you can go here to catch up.  This one will make much more sense if you have read that one first.

The second hit was an adoption registry, so of course my curiosity was piqued.  I clicked on the link and it took me to Findmyfamily.org   At the top of the page there was a summary that said , "Registrant Jessie Harvey is a birth sibling looking for a birth sibling." The adoptee was born in Indiana.  That particular heading didn't necessarily mean anything to me at first, but after I read the rest of the contents on that page, it meant everything.


There was no information given for a name or date of birth under the adoptee's info. Only that the gender of the adoptee was female and born in an unknown city in Indiana. But under the birthmother's info it said her name was Carol Ann Harvey (Close) and her birthdate was September 7, 1953.   I was a female, born in Indiana, with a birthmother named Carol Close who my dad thought was around 20 or 21 when I was born. This birthdate of this person meant that she turned 20 just two weeks after I was born. This could be her!!!  And if it was, that meant that Jessie was my sibling and had been told about me, so I wouldn't be a secret. If you go back a couple of posts to where I listed the reasons why I didn't want to search, the second one was that I didn't want to just show up unannounced.  If this was really her, then that reason too was no longer valid.

Somewhere along the way, I took Josiah and dropped him off at his playdate. I ran a quick errand and hurried home to keep looking.  I googled as fast as I could and I was getting some results.

"Carol Harvey + Jessie Harvey" resulted in finding Jessie's birth record. Carol was listed as the mom and Ron Harvey as the dad.  It was at this time that I found out Jessie's middle name was Arlene and realized she was a girl. Up to that point I thought I had found a brother. (sorry Jessie!)

Now with three names, I easily found Carol listed in a family tree.  This told me that she had been married twice.  She not only married Ronald Harvey who was the father of Jessie and another girl, Jenna, but had first been married to a man named David Gee who was the father of two boys, Brad and Brent. I was overwhelmed.  If this was her, I had four siblings.  I was trying to not get too excited in case it ended in disappointment, but I couldn't help myself. My hands were shaking.

With a larger number of names to help me identify people, I turned to Facebook.  Looking for Carol produced no results.  I could not find Jessie or Jenna, but was able to find the boys and their wives.  Some of the pages were pretty private, but Alyssa, who is Brent's wife, had a page that was fairly open. On her page I was able to see her friends.  I started looking through the list of people and then I saw it. It was a profile picture of a dog and underneath it said, "Carol Harvey".  My heart stopped.  Then it began pounding so hard I thought it was going to fall out of my chest.

I clicked on the picture and it took me to her page.  Her timeline was private, so I moved to her photo section.  I clicked on the profile picture album. It was full of memes and pictures of dogs. Every now and then there was an old picture of one of her kids. But then I saw it.....it was a picture of her.  I opened it up and just sat there staring at her face.

It was her.  It had to be.

In her face, I saw my brown, squinty eyes. I saw hints of high cheekbones hidden under the roundness of her face. I saw the same high forehead I have always struggled to cover. And then right down the middle of her forehead was the very same wrinkle that I have on mine.

I couldn't believe it.  I texted the link to her Facebook profile to Steve and said, "I think I have found my birth mom."

And I had to leave to go pick up Josiah....

The Story of My Life: The Indian Princess (or not!)

Four years ago I went to the eye doctor for a check up.  What happened during that appointment gave me another glimpse into the unknown part of my life.  Check it out for yourself. Here is a screenshot of my status update that day:

I remember many times after that appointment looking in the mirror at myself and seeing things just a little bit differently. Hmmm....Native American, huh? Suddenly having dark eyes and high cheekbones began to mean something to me. Maybe I could have been an Indian princess. :)  You might be wondering what is such a big deal about this anyway.  Well, my whole life I had known nothing of my ethnicity at all.  When I would ask my parents, they would just tell me I was "just American".  I always thought that it was cool when someone could say they were German, Italian, etc. They had a piece of culture and history that they could embrace. When I lived in Romania, the people there often thought I looked Romanian so I had sometimes wondered if that could even be a possibility. For me to be able to say that I had some Native American in me was super cool because I finally felt like there was a piece of culture I could claim as my own.  Not long before this discovery, I had dyed my hair a darker brown and started wearing some jewelry that was made with rocks, so I began to say that those fashion decisions were obviously based on my heritage and the fact  that I was indeed an Indian princess. It was just "in me".

Now I could stop here because really this is where this particular part of the story ended.  Nothing  came out of this discovery as far as my search goes, at least not for a while. But to save myself from the hate emails and death threats of having such a short post, I will keep going. But in order to do so, you have to fast forward with me a year and a half to late Spring 2014.

I had taken Zoe to piano lessons. She takes from a sweet 80+ year old lady, Mrs. Martin,  who was my piano teacher when I was a little girl. That particular day when I arrived,  Mrs. Martin told me that her daughter, Kathy, was here visiting and I could come in and talk with her if I wanted to. I knew Kathy from when I was younger as we had gone to church together and our dad's both worked at Piedmont Bible College.  Kathy and her brother had also been adopted so we had that in common too. We started chatting and she began telling me about how she had done some DNA testing and even though she had not been able to locate any close relatives, she had been able to get some medical information from the testing. She had also been able to figure out her ethnicity and some other information from it too.

I came home and told Steve about it and after some thought and online investigation of my own, I ordered a DNA kit from ancestry.com.  It arrived just a few days later and after I spit into the little tube, I excitedly sent the packet back off in the mail again.  It seemed like forever before I heard anything.  Finally the email arrived that said they had received my DNA and were processing it and then not too long after the email came saying my results were finished.  In reality, the whole process took only about a months time but the wait felt much longer.

I logged into my account and began looking at the different charts and graphs that would give me information about myself. There was a list of DNA relatives, but none of the known relatives were particularly close in relation.  Then I got to the ancestry composition graph.  99.8% European,  0.2% of a mixture of other things so insignificant that I cannot remember at this point in time what they were, and 0% Native American.  Yep, that is right. No Native American in me whatsoever. I could not believe it. That isn't what the eye doctor had said!  I even called ancestryDNA to make sure that they hadn't mixed up my test with someone else's. They assured me they hadn't . When I told them that my eye doctor was sure I had Native American in me and that the test said I didn't, they told me that the ancestry percentage may change over time as their process continued to be refined.

I just couldn't believe it.  I was so disappointed.

The following day, Zoe was going to my parents for the day and Josiah was going to go to a playdate in the afternoon with a friend. I went over to their house in the morning to drop her off and when I got there, I began to tell my parents about the test results.  I don't remember exactly how the conversation went, but at the end of it, my dad said, "If you have a few minutes, we can find the information that the adoption agency gave us about your birth parents when you were adopted and you can have a copy of it."   I agree to help him look and TWO HOURS later, we found it in an old filing cabinet in the garage. He said they had always tried to keep our adoption files hidden so we wouldn't accidentally come across them if we were looking through their drawers. I guess they had done a good job of hiding it if at 40 years of age it took me so long to help him find it. :)

As you can see from the following picture, there really wasn't much information on the paper at all.    One half sheet of paper typed. That was it.  When my younger brother was adopted in 1982, my parents received a whole file folder full of stuff on him.  It didn't seem fair.  As I read through the paper, there really wasn't much on there that my parents hadn't already told me, except for maybe the part about my birth father having a growth removed from an arm pit.  That part made me chuckle then and still does today as that seems like such an odd detail to include.


I left with the paper in hand and went home.  There was a bit of time before I had to take Josiah to his playdate. I went in my bedroom with the paper and my computer and decided it was time to try to search again.  As I stared at the paper wondering if there was any bit of information that could help me with my search, one thing seemed to jump off the page at me. Of course, why I had I never thought about this before.

"Since she was adopted as an infant, we know nothing of her natural parents."

If I was adopted and searching for my birth mother, who is to say that my birth mother didn't do the same since she was adopted herself. Maybe, just maybe, I could find a family tree or something else that talked about HER being adopted.  So I googled once again.

Carol Close + Adopted.

The results came up and the second hit caught my attention. I clicked on the link and I could not believe what I was reading.....


And yes, I am sure by now you know what is coming....... more on this next time. ;)

The Story of My Life: The First Clue (Part Two)

So just to quickly recap what happened last time - I had been struggling physically and decided to see if the adoption agency could provide me with some medical info. Nothing.  I registered with the State of Indiana Vital Records to see if I could get some health information that way. Again nothing.  Then one night I am at my parent's house and my Dad tells me he knows my birth mother's name and he will tell me if I want to know.....

Now hold on here. I don't know if you remember or not, but a couple of blogs ago I listed a set of reasons why I was never really interested in searching for my birth mom.  One of them was because I never wanted to hurt my parents. I never wanted them to feel like they weren't good enough or that I wanted someone other than them in the role of parents in my life. The thought had never occurred to me that maybe my parents would want to know who my birth parents were, that they too would be interested in knowing the circumstances that surrounded how I came to be.  But that is exactly how it was. This one reason for not wanting to search was now null and void. Not only was my dad standing in front of me suggesting that I begin searching, he was reaching out his hand to give me the key that would open that very first door.

So I took it.

And he told me. Her name was Carol Close.  He said that even after all of these years he had never been able to forget.   He also told me that he thought he remembered her to be around 20 or 21 years old when I was born and that he was pretty sure she wasn't from the state of Indiana. He thought maybe Idaho.

I went home and I googled and I googled and I googled.  I found lots of people named Carol Close, but their age wouldn't be right or they lived in a different part of the country or Close was not their maiden name. Sometimes I would come across someone who would seem to fit the age range but then if I found their profile on Facebook they had the wrong color hair and eyes. The worst ones were when I was following someone's internet trail only to find out that they had died. I would find myself heartbroken at the thought.



My heart and emotions were up and down. I found myself feeling more deeply about the whole situation than I really was ready to admit.  I had never allowed myself to open wide the door to my inner feelings about being adopted and then once I did,  it was almost more than I could handle. So I just kept the door cracked instead, trying to hold some of the feeling inside.  I mean, what if I did finally decide to go looking for her to find out that she had really died. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to handle it.

I would search for several hours a few days in a row and then I would give up and not search again for a few weeks or months. This went on for more than a year or so. I don't remember the exact timeline.  I was almost at the point of giving up for good. Maybe the adoption agency was right that she had fallen off the face of the earth.  But then I found out some things that were very interesting and encouraging to me. It led me down a different path and on that path I discovered just a bit more about myself.....

More on that next time.

The Story of My Life: The First Clue (Part One)

As the children grew, it was so fun to watch their physical features and personalities develop and to see what all they had inherited from both Steve and me.  Josiah shared not just my brown eyes and facial features, but some of my personality traits as well. Zoe had her daddy's beautiful blue eyes and outgoing personality.  They both were quick learners and had a love for music.

The early days of life for little ones are filled with many doctors visits.  As we went for this or for that, for the first time in my life I began to think about how not cool it was that I didn't have to answer all of the questions on the sheet. You know, the ones about your family history and all the diseases and conditions you could possibly have inherited. I used to think it was great that I could just put "Don't know - adopted" and be done with it. But now with the best interest of my kids at heart, I began to wonder if there were conditions that I needed to be aware of,  things that I could have possibly passed on to them without knowing.

This concern grew as a couple of years after Zoe was born, I began experiencing digestive issues. As the doctors did multiple tests on me to try to figure out what was wrong (MRI, endoscopy, etc) and coming up with no answers, the thought that I may have some kind of inherited condition grew. Before you get overly concerned about what might possibly be wrong with me, the final conclusion after many months of tests was that I had a yeast overgrowth. I did a cleanse and took some anti-fungals and it pretty much went away.  But during the months that all of this uncertainty was going on, when Steve asked if we should contact the adoption agency to see if they had or could get any health information for me, I said yes.

He called and talked to them and they said they did not have any health information on file but would try to track down my birth mother to see if they could get any information from her.  I was at home the day they called back.  I answered the phone and when they told me it was the adoption agency, I was  hopeful that maybe they had some information for me. Instead, they informed me that they had searched for my birth mom but could not find any trace of her. It was almost as though she had fallen off the earth.  Their suggestion was that I register with the State of Indiana Vital Records in hopes that I might be able to obtain some health information that way. You see, up until January 1, 1986, the State of Indiana did not require that a comprehensive medical report be included in the file of an adoptee.  In an effort to try to help adoptees gather this information, they started a medical history registry.  But the registry is voluntary.  On top of that, I learned at this same time, that if you were adopted in the state of Indiana after January 1, 1994, when you turned 21 you were able to write in and request identifying information from the state unless your birth parent had written in and specifically requested that it not be released.  But for people adopted prior to that, which I was, the only way to get identifying information from my file was if both of my birth parent AND I sent in a release form to the state.  Frustrated and pretty certain that it wouldn't produce any results, I filled out the forms anyway and sent them in.  Sure enough - nothing.

It wasn't too long after that and Steve and I were over at my parent's house.  I don't remember what we had been doing over there, but what I do remember very distinctly is my dad asking me just before we left how I was feeling.  I told him about the same. At that point in time, he asks me if I had ever thought about looking for my birth mother to see if I could get medical information from her.   I told him then how we had already contacted the adoption agency to see if they could get information for me and how they were unable to find her.  It was at this point he said something that totally blew me away.....He told me that when I was adopted, that the courts accidentally sent them the wrong papers.  He had begun reading them all those years ago and once he got to my birth mother's name, he realized he wasn't supposed to be seeing that information, so he folded the letter up and mailed it back to them.  But even after all those years he couldn't forget and if I wanted to know what her name was, HE WOULD TELL ME........  (to be continued.)

The Story of My Life: In Everything There is a Purpose

Last night as the final hours of 2016 counted down, I ate pizza, played Settlers of Catan and watched a friend open oysters to find pearls on Facebook Live. As I lay in bed just before midnight scrolling through my Facebook feed, I saw lots of people posting what the year 2016 meant for them.  Some people had great years filled with lots of blessings. For others, it was a more difficult time and they are gladly looking forward to a fresh start in 2017.  For me, I can look back on it and say that 2016 is the first year in the 43 that have been my life where I knew exactly where I came from. It was the year that capped off all of my discoveries about myself with the hugest discovery of all --- what the circumstances were that led to my beginning. It will always be a big moment for me and I am excited to finally be at the point in the story where I can begin explaining how it all came to be.

Before I do, I want to say that I am sharing all of this from my point of view.  You will read in the blogs to come my thoughts and see my emotions through this part of the story. But mine are not the only ones you need to consider. There are thoughts and emotions and feelings and experiences that come from every other person involved. I do not know or pretend to know all that has taken place in their lives. All I can share is what I know from my own.  You might find yourself at times being overly excited or very angry.  All I ask is that if you choose to comment or post that you keep things positive.  I am not passing judgement onto anyone, and I am asking you to not to do so either.

My marriage to Steve was one of the key events that put this ball of searching into motion. He takes a firm stance on the pro-life position which is something that I truly admire about him.  How cool it was for me to find out while we were dating that he had even been a financial supporter of the very adoption agency that I was adopted out of - the Baptist Children's Home of Valparaiso, Indiana.  Seriously, what are the chances of that?? At that point in my life, he was more curious about where I had come from than I was.  He offered not long after we were married to help me find out whatever information I wanted to know about my birth parents. "We can hire a private detective," he would say.  As I have mentioned before, I was very content with being adopted, so when I would respond saying that I really wasn't interested in searching,  he wondered why.  I had some very specific reasons. I had definitely thought about it before. I am going to lay them out for you so you can see how I believe God was truly guiding me along this path as He put those reasons to rest one by one in a very clear way.

• I was adopted in a closed adoption. I did not believe there was any way that I could get information that would help me locate my birth parents.
• I did not want to hurt my adoptive parents in any way. They are my real parents and have been here for me since I was a baby. They have journeyed with me through the good and the bad. I believed at that point in time to begin a search for my birth parents would be a slap in the face to them and would somehow say that they were not adequate enough in their job as parents.
• I did not want to hurt my birth mother by showing up unannounced after all these years. In the time that I was adopted, many girls were sent away to have their babies and it was never spoken of after that point. I did not know if she had remarried, had a new family of her own and if I were to appear if that would somehow interrupt that or make things difficult.  I did not know if she had ever even spoken of me to anyone so I didn't want to somehow chance that I would ruin her life.

As you can see, my reasons were valid.  The only problem was that they were focused on protecting other people's feelings and didn't directly address my own. I think that looking inside to the deeper feelings and questions I had about my adoption was something that I had never been really good at facing. But that was about to change.....

Less than a year from the time that Steve and I were married, we found out we were pregnant. There was much excitement about the new addition that would be added to our family. Our hopes were crushed when at 11 weeks,  just a couple of weeks after our first anniversary, I lost the baby.  There were many tears and much heartache. There were questions that followed as to whether or not something was physically wrong as we tried but were not getting pregnant again after the miscarriage.  Looking back now, it really wasn't an incredible amount of time that we had been trying, but in the moment, it felt like forever.  One year after we found out we were expecting the first time, we found out we were expecting again and Josiah Bryan was born on July 11, 2006.  Oh the love that was felt for this sweet little baby with the big brown eyes.  This love would be carried on to his sweet blue-eyed sister that was born just 21 months later. Zoe Elizabeth arrived on April 26, 2008. With a name that means "life" in Greek, she has been exactly that.  Right after Zoe turned one, we found out we were expecting again for the fourth time.  This pregnancy too ended in heartache as I miscarried at 10 weeks.  The first time I miscarried it was a loss that came with questions as to whether I would ever be able to carry a child. This second time it was a loss that came with a heartache of knowing exactly what I would be missing out on since I had already carried two wonderful, beautiful children to full term.

I remember in the midst of that time, sitting my children down on the steps and taking this picture of them. Though my heart was broken, I knew how truly blessed we were to have these two rug rats.  Even though the days were ended of us growing our family in number, I knew there was a huge task in front of us in helping these two grow in wisdom and knowledge. 

When I look back to the heartache and loss of those two miscarriages, there are so many things that I don't understand.  I wish there was no hurt in this world and that this amount of pain and heartache would never have to come upon a person.  But it does.  I believe that nothing happens without a purpose and if you take the time to see what God might be trying to teach you in those moments, despite the sadness, there is a plan for something good.  God used those moments in my life to help me understand the feeling of loss.  This was something that I would need in the future as I would try to put myself in the shoes of my birth mother who had given me away.  

More on that coming up soon......